Understanding Scripture ...

Without the lens of Jesus Christ, scripture is impossible to understand.  But when looking at scripture through the lens of Jesus Christ there is no mystery that will not be revealed.  And it is upon this truism where nearly every Christian church has gone astray.  We may come by it honestly.  But where our forefathers tripped up and stumbled, we seem bound and determined to have history repeat itself in our generations and in our hearts.  We treat Jesus like a topic, like a person who lived and died some 2000 years ago.  Oh sure Jesus may have risen from the dead and gone back to heaven, but that is just part of His story where we are concerned, and sadly for most of us, we treat it like the end of the story.  Jesus is just another subject matter contained in the Bible. 

We don’t use Jesus as the Rosetta Stone by which to interpret scripture.  We treat scripture as independent units that do not require Jesus to properly understand.  For instance, the Law, that is the Ten Commandment Law, is treated as fully independent from Jesus.  It talks about God in it.  But since it does not specify Jesus by name, we apply a generic “God” into its interpretation and set about deciding what everything in it means.  “Love the Lord with all your heart” should equally apply to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost with God interpreted in a generic sense of the word.  But what if this was Jesus as the author of this law referring to His Father God as the object of who we are to love?  It changes our understanding if thought about this way.  Why would it be important to Jesus that we love His Father so much?  Could it be that Jesus wants us to understand that Father God is every bit as interested in having an intimate loving relationship is, as our savior is?  And when we get generic with our meaning of who God is in this directive, what do we do with the Holy Spirit?  We know there is One.  But we understand that part of the Godhead so little.  How do we love what we understand so little?  But a Dad is easy to understand.  And a Savior is even easier.

My point is not to offer “the understanding” of the Ten Commandment Law, but it is to examine it once again through the lens of Jesus Christ.  Take for example once again, the Sabbath Day and what we are supposed to do and not do to honor it.  Jesus completely turned over all the traditions of His day while He was here.  Yet He made it His tradition, His habit, to always go to synagogue and worship every Sabbath while here on earth.  Was that example?  Was that important?  Was that just for our benefit?  The answer might be found in what He did in the synagogue every time He went – He opened the scriptures and taught.  Not the old traditional views of scripture.  But new ways to see the same texts people had been listening to since birth.  He opened the eyes and ears of the people to the Bible (or what they had of it back then) in ways that were literally brand new to them.  The priests were often offended.  But the people ate it up.  Does that sound like church to you these days?  Do you come home talking with your family about the message where scripture has come alive to you, and showed you something new you never saw before?  Or have we buried the “sermon” in all the packaging we surround it with, never once using Jesus to see Old scriptures, but instead talking about Jesus like He is a completely different topic than anything in the Old Testament, or perhaps outside of the 4 books of the gospels.

And if Jesus was meant to be the lens by which we interpret scripture, and we leave Him out of what we do, and what conclusions we draw – we have become the Pharisees of old; the right church, the right scripture, the right God – and no understanding of anything.  And lest you think you do not need Jesus to understand scripture take as a case in point Jesus teaching in the Temple for 3 days when He was only twelve.  Those priests, Pharisees, Scribes, Sadducees, and leaders were absolutely captivated by every word He offered, every conclusion He drew, every insight He revealed.  This was no 2 hour sermon.  This was a live 3 day event.  Think about that.  Those priests knew He did not belong to any of them.  They probably knew his actual parents would be searching for Him at that tender age.  But they didn’t care.  They were so intent listening to this great mind and great heart, they were like addicts craving more teaching from the lips of this mere Child.  And their minds were opened.  Yet somehow we see this event as something for someone else.  As if how we study the Bible, is just fine as it is, leaning on the traditions our churches offer, and looking for no new insights.

But it was not just the priests and leadership who needed Jesus to show them scriptures when He was 12 years old.  Nor was it the people who attended synagogues who needed His wisdom imparted every single Sabbath day while He was here.  Those men and women closest to Jesus, the ones who knew Him best, and understood Him best, who bore witness to His life – they still needed to have scripture opened to them.  The disciples, despite all that access, and all that involvement in the very story of Jesus, were actually no better off than the typical priest or scribe.  Even after the resurrection they still clung to the old versions of how the Bible was to be interpreted.  In their mind, maybe NOW after everything, the Messiah would finally kick the Romans out of dodge.  But alas, the Romans were still fully in charge.  Even the very ones who beat Jesus, who pushed a crown of thorns deep in His skull, who nailed Him naked to a cross and watched Him die.  All of those very Romans were still untouched, unpunished, and weirdly loved by Jesus.  Nothing they expected from scripture or tradition about Christ the conqueror had come to pass as they expected it to.  The lens of Jesus was to be applied once more.

Luke picks up the story in chapter 24 of his letter to his friend about what we believe and why, at the end of the chapter in verse 44 it reads … “And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. [verse 45] Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,”  Notice what he does, Jesus opens their understanding.  Before Jesus is applied to scripture our understanding is muted.  Without Him and His example, we lose not only meaning, but love itself.  Go back to our example about Sabbath keeping from the Ten Commandment law; Jesus never put the day ahead of healing of one in need.  He could have.  He could have said to come back tomorrow, or to meet Him at Peter’s house the next day.  Jesus could have done a time-based-healing where the minute the sun went down, the healing took place, no matter where He was at that moment in time.  The sick would have still been overjoyed to be healed.  They were sick their whole lives, waiting a few hours more would have been nothing to them, just a few more hours in pain.

But that lesson is the lesson we needed to learn, both then and now.  Jesus never waits to love us, or meet our highest needs, He does what He does right here, right now, we need not wait a second longer.  And Sabbath is not more important to Him than your pain, He treasures His time with you, and will not let you spend it suffering for the sake of tradition and misunderstanding about how a Sabbath law should be kept.  Our salvation is the priority, Sabbath is a tool to help us see that, not a wall to keep us in pain, even pain we created for ourselves.  Without the lens of Jesus Christ, it is easy to make Sabbath arbitrary, cold, unfeeling or unsympathetic.  But with the life story of Jesus as it pertains to Sabbath, we begin to see the joy of learning, of loving, and of making care of each other the highest form of worship there may ever be.

Luke continues in verse 46 saying … “And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: [verse 47] And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. [verse 48] And ye are witnesses of these things.”  The life of Christ was to be one of suffering for our sins, to conquer us through transforming love, not to conquer the Roman kingdom by force or other means.  The life of Christ would die willing for us, to save us from ourselves.  The Romans were not the threat.  They could kill the body, but could not touch the soul who believes.  No political power can ever rob you of your belief in Jesus.  They may be able to kill you for your belief, but they cannot take it from you.  Only you can give up or let go what you believe in.  Other people are not the true threat to your salvation.  You are.  So Jesus offers you a way to ground your faith in Him, and a way to see your sin driven from you by His power, through His means on His timeline.  The repentance and remission of sins.  Not just to feel bad about them.  But to see them driven from you.  For you to be made free from them.  And all those many disciples both men and women in attendance in that upper room were witnesses to all of this.

Jesus then moves the focus of scripture from the past to the present and the future.  Luke concludes picking up in verse 49 saying … “And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.  [verse 50] And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. [verse 51] And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. [verse 52] And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: [verse 53] And were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen.”  The disciples needed the power of the Father God in order to strengthen them for the ministry each of them would live and die for in the near future.  To be faithful to the end was part of what was given each of them.  But here Jesus shows them what scripture could not, a point of view of what was happening right then, and what was to come.  Luke records it in his letter.  We have it from what has become the gospel of Luke.

Just because Jesus is in this book, does not mean we will understand even this gospel, without asking Jesus for understanding, following where He leads our minds, and letting Him reveal it to us.  And by applying what we learn of Jesus here, to other passages and stories in the Bible, we begin to see scripture more consistently.  Stories in the Old Testament we once thought of in destructive terms, flip on their heads, as we begin to see each story is one of salvation, or of God’s desperate attempts to give us salvation.  There were only 8 people in the Ark of Noah, but it would have housed many more if they but would accept it.  And if many more than that were convicted, perhaps the flood itself might have never come.  When God came to Noah, it was to save Noah.  And in the process of that saving, 120 years went by, with Noah preaching to people from all over the world, who came to see this “Noah’s folly”.  Those people were exposed to the powerful preaching of Noah, endowed with the Holy Spirit to add fire and conviction to his words.  But still the hearts of evil clung to evil, and chose death.  Not for lack of knowing the truth, but for lack of wanting “that truth”.  The flood did not happen in 2 hours, or 2 days.  It was delayed 120 years.  The progress of the building of the Ark was slow but measurable.  Jesus was bent on saving us, and only destroying evil.  But we would not let go of evil.

Whether we see the flood of Noah as world wide destruction, or as a desperate attempt at our salvation by a God steeped in love is a matter of whether you apply the lens of Jesus Christ to this story in scripture.  You know how Jesus loved based on everything else you have read.  Did you think that love only happened then for mankind?  Did you think Jesus only came to save the people in His own time?  No, Jesus has loved us since He created us.  Jesus has been desperate to save us since then if only we would let Him.  But as in the days of Noah, when man was sure there would be no end to his evil and his potential to do even greater evil, so in our day, an end is coming.  The final destruction of this world is meant to be a final destruction of those who simply prefer evil and will not give it up.  Yet the story is not about those who are lost, it is about those who were saved from this fate, through Jesus.  To really understand it all, we must seek Jesus to show us, and to open our minds to it.  It is the only way to really see.

 

Growing Young Again ...

 

For us, time only moves one direction, forward.  Once the past is past, it cannot be undone or altered.  This is how we know life to be, usually to our great regret.  And as time moves on, we age, always growing only older.  2yr-olds turn into 4yr-olds, 20 becomes 30, 50 becomes 60, and before you know it, you are facing your own mortality up close and personal.  Mind you the distance between 2-years-old and 60 is what we describe as a lifetime.  But in truth, it is not.  All of our years here are but a drop in the bucket, perhaps not even as much as a drop more like a molecule, and perhaps instead of a bucket, an entire ocean.  There comes a life to those who believe that becomes nearly impossible to measure in years, for too many years pass by.  The idea of eternity is hard for the human mind to grasp.  We are too bound in the present, where our life expectancy is set before we are born, where reaching the age of 90 in relatively good health is considered an achievement.  To reach a 100 is so rare it is worthy of press attention, beyond that is hardly something people will even believe.  And in the context of eternity, 100 years old is barely a half a second, or a single blink of an eye.  When time has no end, time becomes less meaningful.  But perhaps the most striking element of eternity for believers is how it begins, not with the dissolution of time itself, but with a change in direction of how we grow.

No, this is not the story of Benjamin Button.  In fact this is not fantasy of any kind.  It is truism.  It is realism.  It descends from the mouth of Jesus Christ Himself.  And as a believer you will come to know the truth of it in your own life.  To actually grow backwards.  Let me give you a small taste.  When you were a toddler, chances are you trusted your parents to completely take care of everything you needed.  As a toddler you had NO idea how they did that.  For that matter, as a toddler you never even gave those thoughts a moment of time in your toddler brain.  They just were.  Or rather, life just was.  It did not need definition.  And your thoughts might then have been pre-occupied only with the basics – am I hungry, or tired, or in need of affection, or play.  And no matter which of these needs or any other your mind might stumble across, your parents were the ones to meet that need.  Sometimes they were good enough to anticipate them.  To feed you before you even knew you were hungry.  To hold you because they needed it, even if you were already comfortable that you were loved.  Parents did for you, because you were loved by them.

Now extend the example to how God interacts with you today.  If you let Him, God will be that parent for you in every single aspect of your life.  When you are hungry, God knows it.  And He promises to meet the needs of today as they arise.  He does not promise to stock your pantry forevermore, but does promise to provide the bread you need as you need it each day.  Sometimes it is hard to wrap your adult brain around even one simple gesture of trust.  But if you can allow it.  You will witness the actions of a loving parent where your life is concerned.  And engaging in this kind of trust–fulfillment–trust cycle only builds trust in you in who God is, and how God is, with you personally.  You begin to see His parental instincts are worlds ahead of your own, or of your own parents.  And the worry of this life abates, and you are made free to think on other things.  The stress of survival begins to recede, and what emerges is the freedom to play more, enjoy more, and spend more time with Dad.  You find Dad was just longing to do that with you all along, and He will make the time, to do it.  In fact, He has already set aside one day in seven, just to mark out some special play time with you.

Having the freedom NOT to worry, is an anti-adult thing.  It is a child-like thing.  And it is only the beginning of your journey.  Luke wrote about it in the 18^th chapter of his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why.  He picks up with the incident that outlines the roadmap to this in verse 15 saying … “And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them.”  This is typical adult behavior.  The Jewish people believed strongly in blessings.  And to be blessed you needed to make physical contact with the person blessing you.  It took the laying on of hands to be precise.  No remote blessings.  No dialing it in.  The person doing the blessing would typically put his hands on your head, and then the prayers and blessings would begin to flow.  Extra special blessings might involve pouring olive oil on your head while the blessing was uttered.  But these parents just wanted a quick blessing from the Rabbi, or rather the Prophet, or rather the possible Messiah, or perhaps the miracle worker they had all witnessed him perform.  It was a good idea.

But the disciples had begun to think of themselves as more serious people, as a quasi-guardian of access to Jesus.  Imagine that, the first most prominent followers of Jesus, soon took their own access to Jesus as a sign they should limit the access of others, instead of trying to bring others to Christ.  Sound familiar?  Does that plague continue to persist today?  Where someone close to Jesus begins to move away from welcoming all to the foot of the cross, to trying to pre-sort the ones that are able to come at all.  And think about it, we adults are serious people.  We already know stuff.  We are capable of hearing, learning, and decided what stuff means.  We have no time for crying babies, or cute toddlers.  They can’t figure all this adult stuff out.  They are incapable.  So why should we waste our time with them.  Only the serious need apply.  Only the capable need even try.  Little ones are neither of those.  Little ones are obsessed with only one thing – they like to play.  There is NO time for playing in church.  There is NO time to try to distract Jesus with cute stuff.  Keep the cute stuff at home, appreciate it there, and don’t bother Jesus in church with any of these antics.  We have no time for that.

But Jesus had other ideas as Luke continues in verse 16 saying … “But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. [verse 17] Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.”  Hold up, wait a minute, Jesus is flipping time and growth on their heads.  Instead of serious, Jesus plans to make time for the little children.  Jesus is going to make time for cute, for play, for love, for affection.  Yes we all know Jesus is busy, there is an entire world to save, there are so many to heal, to feed, to preach to.  But put ALL of that on pause for a moment.  Something more important has come up.  A little child wants access to Jesus.  And Jesus is going to stop it all, make time, and fulfill that need.  Serious is out the window.  Reverent has been tossed out of the play-yard.  Jesus will enter instead.  But Jesus takes it a whole world farther than anyone – parent, or disciple – could have ever anticipated.  Jesus declares that the entire Kingdom of God (not just a part of it, but the whole of it) is made up of little babies and toddlers like these kids.  What does that mean?  Adult minds are scrambling now to figure that out.  Adult minds are racing to figure out a new doctrine that runs counter to every bit of wisdom they have been taught, and still they have no clue what it means.

It gets worse.  Jesus ups the ante.  Jesus further declares that all us adults are never getting in to the Kingdom until we learn to receive that gift and embrace it like one of these non-serious, heavy playing, heavy loving little toddlers does.  Not just bad enough that people in the Kingdom are like these kids, people cannot even get inside until they become like one of these kids.  Adult minds just begin to collapse at that declaration.  And shouldn’t they?  Give this thought a minute to sink in, in your own mind.  Jesus is asking for more than just baby-talk you might do with your spouse behind closed doors, or with your small children on the floor while you are playing with them.  He is not asking you to act young.  He is asking you to be young, to grow backwards, to lose adulthood in favor of the trust and love of a young toddler who never even thinks about “adult” things.  Toddlers have no time for that.  It would seem what there is time for is completely upside down when seen through the eyes of Jesus.

At this point, the self-appointed-guardians of access to Jesus, have backed up and gone nuts.  They have opened the floodgates of little ones jumping right into the welcoming arms of Jesus.  They don’t know why.  They heard Jesus describe the Kingdom as made up of these.  But the idea that they have to become like these to ever get in – is beyond them.  That is impossible.  That defies physics, and history, and everything we know about life.  It is upside down world.  So how could we possibly make that happen?  It would seem we are all doomed.  It would get worse, before it would get better.  To drive home the point about how this could ever happen, the story continues picking back up in verse 18 saying … “And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? [verse 19] And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God. [verse 20] Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.”

Now this was someone the disciples could equate to, perhaps to aspire to.  A rich young ruler, an adult, who was obviously blessed by God, as witnessed by his wealth.  He comes to Jesus asking how he might be saved.  This answer should obviously clean up that whole be a kid thing.  First Jesus redirects the false flattery back to God who alone deserves it.  Then the first words of Jesus are not about being a kid, they are about keeping the law of Moses.  Finally!  These are words the entire Jewish nation will understand.  Keeping the law is engrained in the DNA.  You keep it, or you are lost.  Period.  No other requirements.  Being a kid, is for kids, this Law stuff is for serious people, for adults who are able to understand it.  The story continues in verse 21 saying … “And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up. [verse 22] Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.”  You see, the serious adult has kept the law from when he was a child up.  Maybe that is what Jesus meant about being a kid, that even non-serious kids better keep the law or else.  But that was not to be.

The answer of Jesus was now even more disturbing and for many reasons.  He tells the rich young ruler, to go and sell everything he owns, for “treasure in heaven”.  Then He follows by inviting him to become the thirteenth male disciple.  Hey wait a minute, I thought only 12 were allowed.  They needed to be paired up for ministry, and 12 was like the number 12 of the tribes of Israel.  Isn’t there some numerical significance to that number, why are we about to open it up to 13 instead?  That makes no sense.  But Jesus is right there about to increase their number, so much for pairing up in evangelism.  Maybe Jesus will invite another one to make it 14.  But putting aside the whole number fiasco.  Jesus asks the rich young ruler to do something ONLY a trusting child could ever do.  To give it all away, and trust, and follow – and not know a single thing more than that.  No road map.  No plan.  No agenda.  Just throw all the cares of money to the wind to care for the poor (and in so doing perhaps help the poor to heaven, thereby increasing the only real treasure in heaven there would ever be), and go and be made free in the doing.

So the whole kid thing has not gone out the window with answer of Jesus.  It is worse.  Jesus is pointing out that keeping the Law given to Moses is only a start.  What is really important is giving your entire trust to Him, losing everything you own, and becoming a toddler disciple with no clue what will happen next.  Your need to know is shot.  You are not going to be told.  When it is time you will know, not before.  And keeping the Law, or having wealth, does not shield you from the need to trust, and to give it all away.  The story picks back up in verse 23 saying … “And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich. [verse 24] And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! [verse 25] For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”  Oh no.  Jesus has just doomed all of their aspirations.  In addition, He just made it impossible for an entire class of people to ever see the inside of the Kingdom of God.  Good thing Nicodemus and Joseph were not here to hear this, it might have depressed them to death.  And every other member of the Sanhedrin.  All of them doomed.  If Peter ever became a successful fisherman, he too might be doomed.  Good thing he was only ever so-so at it.

But this response of Jesus to once again defy physics, and reverse everything we know about religion and life was perplexing more than just the disciples this time.  Luke picks back up in verse 26 saying … “And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved? [verse 27] And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”  And there it is, the methodology of our salvation spelled out in terms both adult mind and child mind can easily understand.  We don’t do it.  We cannot do it.  We cannot reverse time or physics.  We are not supposed to.  We are supposed to trust that even though we are unable to save ourselves, that Jesus and God are able, and will do that very thing.  What is in fact, impossible for us, is possible for God.  Where our spiritual maturity has thus far been measured in how serious we adult-minds have become – is now to be turned on its head and go backwards – more trust, more play, more love – less stress, less worry, less trying to figure everything out.  We are to lose our need to know, and to just be.  Be free.  Play with Dad.  Enjoy His hugs.  Share His blessings.  Push His love to us outwards, and sideways, to everyone with no limitations – just like a group of toddlers will do. 

We don’t grow backwards into toddlers of His kingdom because we “act” like them, but because we become them.  We cannot act our way into heaven.  We cannot perform the duties required to get into heaven.  We must instead become different people, much younger people, with absolute trust, and a freedom we have yet to experience.  To leave everything up to God, is invigorating, renewing, and freeing beyond all measure.  We stop needing to know “how” God does it, we just need to know He does.  And life and history teach that too.  Our minds then, need not be so serious, but instead be trusting and loving.  Keeping His law then will come not because we will it, or think we do, but because He creates obedience in us, as a natural state of who we become.  And as pointed out here, that is only the beginning.  We will grow into a state of wild abandon with Jesus.  Willing to give up every single thing we own.  Trusting in Dad to meet every need, and watching Dad do exactly that and more.  We can grow backwards, and grow younger, not because it is possible for us, but because it is possible for God, and God does it for us, in us, and through us.  Sit back my toddler friends, time to let Dad take over, and enjoy the ride.

 

The Greatest Legal Minds ...

In our day “the law” is a written aspiration of seeking justice.  We use the law as a tool to attempt to insure fairness and equality.  But even the greatest legal scholars among us will recognize that our entire body of laws are simply, not perfect.  This would make sense.  Since man is not perfect, the devices of his imagination are likely not to be perfect either.  In the field of art, we glory in these imperfections and unusual perspectives.  But in the field of law, we attempt to fix the imperfections as we stumble across them, or suffer from their application.  But no matter how much we continue to revise our laws, to attempt to find a better justice than the one we had before, our work on them is never quite finished.  One could find it interesting that while our laws can trace their roots all the way back to the tablets of stone Moses first carried down the mountain – our “evolution” of them has resulted in only more opportunities for improvement over time, not less.

In the days of Moses, “the law”, was the first revelation given to the people of earth, of what it means to love.  For a people fresh from slavery, who never had the freedom to think and act as they chose, God tried to reveal to them in the tablets of stone (and in His very tangible presence, with daily miracles of His care), what the base definition of love is.  That Ten Commandment law then, was the first guide rails, in answer to the question – what does it mean to love God, and to love each other.  But herein is where most of us jump the rails; the law, was NOT a definitive list, it was merely a beginning.  If the legal code of the United States is written across volumes of books today, imagine how much bigger it would be, if we were to attempt to define what it means to love on top of all the other statutes.  The Ten Commandments were a start, a beginning, NOT a comprehensive definition of how to love.  Common sense would build on this law, and provide a next step, in how to make love deeper, richer, and better.  For instance, if I love you, I would not think to steal from you.  Common sense would tell me, that as I get to know you, I will find out what you like, and try to share those interests with you, simply because it makes you happy.  Theft is the farthest thing from my mind.  Giving and trying to improve your life (because that makes me happy too) is at the top of it.

When you think in those terms, when you feel passionately in those terms, other crimes drop from you like scales off of a snake.  When I love you, I do not think to enslave you, I do not think to rape or abuse you, all of the evil that can be done to you, is NOT what I would see happen to you, not by the world, and especially not by me.  The Ten Commandments enumerate a starting point, but when love is my way, my list gets substantially longer.  This does not represent a flaw in God’s law, it represents true obedience to it, and the genius of it.  We were never meant to be satisfied with how great we can love.  We were always meant to discover an even greater love for others, every single day of our lives, not just in this life, but in the eternal one to come.  That thought should overwhelm you.  It is meant to.  To know that your ultimate state of bliss can only be measured today, for tomorrow it will become greater, is beyond the limits of our imagination.  Yet our reality to come.

Which takes us to the purpose of the law in heaven.  The “law” of God, that is to say the “love” of God, will never disappear throughout all of eternity.  We will not lie to each other throughout infinity.  We will speak only truth forevermore.  The reason – because truth is what love speaks – and lies only damage what we say we love.  We will not steal anymore, because stealing hurts others, and our internal passions will never be to hurt, but to uplift.  And here is another mind blower.  There is NOTHING in the law about how “much” you can give to somebody else.  There are no caps on giving.  The sky is the limit.  And giving will be natural, theft unthinkable.  When this is true, the law, or His love, is the core of who you are.  And while the law never disappears, we will need it no longer, because we would not think to transgress it.  For us the need of the law itself is gone, because the focus of our minds and hearts is on how to love others greater, not how to love less.

Here on earth, where God’s love looks restrictive, meaning it points out something I want to do, but am not supposed to do – this is where even the term “law” comes from.  The law here on earth only restricts my evil.  In that sense, the law is truly the beginning definition of what it means to love.  All our laws are designed to keep my selfishness from invading and harming your life.  For it is self-love that creates the need for any law in the first place.  Take away all self-love, and you can take away the need for any law forevermore.  But when you do love self, and not so many others, the law acts as a mirror to show you, how actions you take reflect a lack of love for others in your life.  It is evil that sees God’s law as restrictive.  And for evil, it is.  Evil, that is self-love, wants to do whatever it wants, regardless of who else might suffer because of it.  That is the nature of all evil in the first place.  The two ways of thinking could not be any more diametrically opposed.  God’s love that loves only others, and Evil’s ideas of love that focuses only on self regardless of others.  When those two ideologies exist, there is need for a law.  Once evil is gone forever, the need for the law will go, as the thinking behind it will obliterate the need for it.

The Pharisees thought themselves masters of the law.  Not because it had penetrated their hearts so that they only loved others.  But because they knew every word that was written, and every habit of action, that might prove they kept the law.  Sound familiar?  In the modern Christian churches which still teach the applicability of His laws (rightly so), His laws are more often taught with accompanying lists of do’s and don’ts.  Further actions defined in order to offer proof, that you are in fact, obeying His laws.  Any descension from the lists, and you are doomed to hell (usually forever).  This application of the law focuses on punishment and the fear of punishment, as your motivation to curb your behavior (if not your enthusiasm).  This is because love itself, is just not understood.  And love for others is not something that has ever been a natural part of how you think.  But without this kind of love, true obedience is just not possible.  It takes reformation of our thinking, of how we love, of what we want, before true obedience is possible.  That comes only from surrender to Jesus of our will, of our thinking, of how we love, and who we love.  Total surrender brings total reformation and re-creation, and then love brings a natural state of obedience, a harmony with His laws of love.  The Pharisees had no personal experience with this, nor did they want one.

If Jesus could not be trapped in matters of popularity (taxes), or in matters of doctrines (resurrection, and how women are to be treated), then perhaps they could trip Him up in a matter of law.  For let’s face it, everyone of us has broken His law at some point in our lives.  Most of us breaking it every day.  They reasoned the human part of Jesus had to be subject to this.  But they forgot His humanity only cloaked His divinity and Jesus had lived a spotless life, though tempted perhaps worse than we are, yet without a single transgression.  The love in Jesus, was not a love for Himself.  It was a love for us.  And a burning passionate love for us, could just not be compromised by an action that might hurt us.  So Jesus remained pure, and their attempts at trapping Him were going to leave them disappointed.  Never the less, they assembled the greatest legal minds of their day, and began to devise a strategy to trip Jesus up in His own law.  Silly when you think about it.  But evil often starts with a silly or ridiculous premise, and degenerates from there.

Matthew picks up the last trap for Jesus in chapter twenty-two of his gospel to the Hebrews in verse 34 saying … “But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. [verse 35] Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, [verse 36] Master, which is the great commandment in the law?”  This was a well-conceived trap.  Which law would you pick as the greatest idea defining love.  If you say do not kill, you leave the body of your neighbor alive, but steal his wife, lie to him about it, and injure him greatly anyway.  If you pick a different law, you can simply kill your neighbor to end any disputes about the damage you do to him.  It devolves down to one of those worst of two evils scenarios.  In that case we would likely pick the do not kill him commandment, reasoning that if he lives, at least he is alive.  But this focus comes from a punishment perspective, not from a true love of others one.

Jesus answers them in verse 37 saying … “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. [verse 38] This is the first and great commandment.”  Why is this the first one?  Think about that for a moment.  If the goal of harmony with the law of God is to love others completely, and love myself not at all.  Then why be taught to love God first?  Could it be that God is love?  And love comes “from” Him, and only “through” you.  Perhaps you are a conduit of His love, not the originator of your own.  Could it be, that for humans steeped in the evil of self-love, the only cure for it, is to come to God first?  Without experiencing the liberation of re-creation, the work of Jesus in us and for us, we are powerless to love anything other than ourselves.  Sin is an addiction that makes no logical sense, yet we find ourselves bound in chains to it anyway.  Only Jesus can break our chains for us, through our surrender to Him.  We cannot free ourselves, we must be made free.  Coming to God first, directing our love to Him first, can allow Him to do the work we need to be saved from ourselves, FIRST.  Only afterwards, is love for anyone other than me, even a real possibility.  Trying to love others first, is nothing more than hidden motives, buried in selfishness that I probably don’t even see.  My love for you, will be a result of my love for Him.  I cannot truly love you, unless I love Him first.

Jesus continues in verse 39 saying … “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [verse 40] On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  Hear closely His own words, that the second commandment is “like unto it”.  Meaning the distinction between the first and second is very subtle.  We must love God first in order to build our own connection to the source of love itself.  But that connection to love was not meant to be turned inwards to ourselves.  It was meant to be turned outwards to the entire world.  Loving our neighbors when we once thought only to love ourselves.  If you were to make a priorities graphic to illustrate this.  You would place a drawing of God at the far left and call that priority one.  Then draw an infinity symbol on its side (it looks like a figure eight).  Under that infinity symbol would be labeled everyone else.  Then at the far right a stick man drawing of you.  You would be priority last.  And that is how it should work, and will work, when Jesus re-creates in you, what it means to truly love.  Jesus restates here for us, that all of the law, and all of the prophets were trying to get this simple message across.  Love God first, love everyone else next.  Self-love is the thing we are trying to rid ourselves of, as every evil can be traced back to it.  And the only freedom from self-love is a surrender to Jesus.

But Jesus had a question for the “masters of the word” before they scurried away.  The story continues in verse 41 saying … “While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, [verse 42] Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The Son of David.”  Jesus was not referring to Himself here, He was simply asking the Pharisees a generic question about “the Christ” they believed would be coming to deliver Israel from the Romans.  The Pharisees responded rightly that the Messiah would be from the lineage of David.  Jesus continues in verse 43 saying … “He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, [verse 44] The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? [verse 45] If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? [verse 46] And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.” 

First of all this stumper left the Pharisees, the lawyers, and the Sadducees speechless.  It was tradition in that day to refer to the King as “Lord”.  And this term only worked upwards in the genealogy.  Solomon would have referred to David as “his Lord”.  David would only have referred to Solomon as his son, or his prince, or the anointed and chosen of God etc.  So if the Messiah as the Son of David, yet referred to by David while under the influence of inspiration (so no doubting he misspoke or something) as His Lord, that would imply the Messiah existed before David, and then again after Him, or as an eternal being, the Son of God.  This was yet another attempt at Jesus trying to use the things the Pharisees loved, namely scripture, to invite them back to Him for reconciliation.  He was revealing who He really was to them, in a way they could understand.  But none were ready to accept.  At least not yet.

The traps all in the past now, I wonder if we understand our own relationships with His law.  We are bound to it forever.  But is the law part of the core of who we are, or do we see it as a restrictive set of conditions we have no idea how to live up to?  That difference is night and day.  It is the difference between walking in darkness, and having experienced the salvation of Jesus in you.  Jesus is NOT saving you from hell.  Jesus is saving you from yourself, and your self love.  He is teaching you how to really live.  How to live in harmony with His laws, making them only a beginning for you to explore what it means to love others.  That journey of exploration is meant for the here and the now, not just for the afterlife.  To be free to love others brings such a state of bliss and happiness it has no words to describe.  Even in a world of sin, you can still be made free from the slavery of self.  That is the Kingdom of heaven Jesus told us was here already.  Become the 2-year-old that runs to the arms of Jesus your Father, trusting in Him to save you, and making you free to love for real.  There is nothing better than this, and it can begin this moment as you surrender this work to Him and watch what He does in you.

 

A Question of Law (witness number nine) ...

The conflict was to be escalated.  Our story continues in the Gospel of John chapter 5.  The religious leaders of the day had determined that a man healed of a crippling disease that was so intense he was unable to move a few feet into a pool of water on his own, had been “ordered” to carry his bed on Sabbath.  This crime was bad enough, but now they had found the Man who did the “ordering”, and determined He must be killed for His offense.  This is the ultimate definition of conservative fundamentalism; those who would espouse contrary beliefs must be killed because they do not agree with the group thinking.  The religious leaders never so much as paused to determine if the act of carrying a bed on Sabbath was indeed a breakage of the law.  A re-evaluation of their understanding of scripture, never so much as entered their heads.  The law is the law after all.  The interpretation however was decided by committee and the results were to be made edict.  Lost in the entire process; the defiance of physics in the miraculous healing of the man, and the love that cared more about healing, than “when” that healing took place.  Even a miracle was not enough to jolt the stubborn mob into re-thinking its position, instead the miracle acted as a catalyst to inspire them to murder.

A verbal debate on the law, the Jewish leadership felt confident they would win.  They had won for many years, and this is why their collective opinions had never been overturned.  If anything they had simply gotten more and more conservative in their interpretation of laws as the years progressed.  This is the natural course of events when the study of law is absent from the love that inspires it.  When one focuses only on actions and not on motives, an interesting cadre of possibilities is presented.  Loopholes emerge.  Fine print becomes important.  A question of law must be thoroughly vetted and a detailed interpretation agreed upon, much like a contract.  However, love is not something so easily and fully defined.  Love is hard to pen on paper, and make a contract out of.  Love seems to always exceed our understanding, and employ concepts that are counter intuitive to our best interests, such as forgiveness, and patience in the face of hate.  How does one interpret motive, and define it, if it is truly based in love?  Laws about actions are easier to proscribe, than a recipe for how to love another.  And so the law had been separated from the love behind it, and actions were all that mattered now.

A miracle in the face of our “facts” was an event that could not be ignored.  A verbal debate might be won as it was historically.  But a defiance of all the known laws of physics and science is not something easily dismissed.  It undoes perceptions.  It redefines realities.  It causes atheists to scramble, and mistaken religious zealots to either pause and re-evaluate, or as in this case, to harden their positions and seek to kill the opposition.  Truly these were a stiff necked people.  And truly so are we.  We harden our resolve never to re-evaluate our core doctrines, no matter what circumstances we encounter.  As such we block out the Holy Spirit from teaching us, as we focus all our energies on “teaching” others in His name.  Not even miracles, give us pause.  We simply find a way to explain the miraculous as either affirming our positions, or being merely coincidence if it disagrees.  Seems as though nothing has changed in the approach of religious leaders from ancient times to now.  But the conflict was to get worse.

Christ answers them in verse 17 and says … “But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”  Ouch.  Jesus had said a mouthful.  First, and this point was completely lost on them, this act of love was not the independent will of Jesus in sympathy for the man, it was an act of love done by the will of the Father.  Second, this “work” was not truly work, it was “love” in action.  When God rested on the seventh-day at creation, the animals he had made did not immediately expire from lack of breath.  The plants did not stop growing.  Gravity was not suspended.  Food did not disappear.  The universe kept spinning as it always had.  Love was not the thing God rested from.  And in making the Sabbath holy He was blessing us, by setting aside His time to spend it with us for one day every week in a special way, a way He outlined.  The intent was to free us from our normal distractions and give us time to spend with Him, the source of all love.  Jesus reaching out to this man on Sabbath begins with addressing his most pressing need, a physical restoration.  Love does not consider a healing from pain the “work” that must be delayed on Sabbath.  The salvation of man does not take a day off.  The restorative work of God on the human heart needs no time out on Sabbath, if anything it needs an acceleration on that day.  We appreciate God all the more, when He frees us from the slavery of self, and offers us some dedicated special time with Him.

In effect, Jesus was saying that the Father Himself, was redefining their interpretation of what “work” was, and what He did in heaven and on earth.  Love was not something God needed rest from, it was something He was and is and would always be.  Love incarnate.  In this instance, Jesus was telling these men, they were wrong, and they were not only arguing with Him, they were literally going to argue with God the Father on this one.  Those words should have been the end of the debate.  And they should have caused those who claimed to worship the Father, to take a step back, apologize, and rejoice in the love the Father wished only to show them.  But it did not.

Verse 18 chronicles their very human, and very stubborn response … “Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.”  Their thinking and their perspective point about their interpretation of the law did not so much as flinch.  They were still certain Jesus had broken the Sabbath, despite only performing an act of love.  Now they saw His reference of the Father as a further crime of Blasphemy, and it only enraged them further.  This is the hallmark of the thinking of Satan.  Reason is abandoned for passion, and steeped in the pride of arrogance.  The Jews were wrong, and they would gladly kill Christ for pointing that out.  The miracle still stood as something beyond their version of “truth”.  Had this been only words, they might have been able to ignore His truth, but when it was bundled with something else they could not explain, they reduced this debate to one of ego, and they were not willing to sacrifice their pride in the study of the law, to the soft-spoken truth of love in action.

Jesus however, does not attempt to dispute this further accusation of blasphemy, he continues his focus on redefining what “work” actually means.  In verse 19 he responds … “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.”  It was common in the culture of the day, that whatever skills and trades the father did in a family, the sons would learn and inherit.  All throughout nature, parent animals teach their young how to find food, build shelter, and care for their young.  A Jewish son would in all likelihood continue the occupation of his father as there was little opportunity to find something else.  At a minimum he would have been educated in his youth of the trades of his father.  This is the truism Jesus references.  In this He further states, this is what I have been taught by my Father.  My Father’s occupation is acts of love, it is what He has taught me.  Acts of love in the mind of God, is not considered work that transgresses the law.  In this Jesus is again stating their argument over their position on the law is in direct conflict with God the Father.  Love is not work, it is a state of being.

In verse 20, Jesus raises the stakes … “For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.”  Now to address the reason for their extreme emotional response, the thing they could not ignore; the miracle.  Guess what, there are greater things than this that you will witness and marvel at.  Here was Jesus saying, this was not a single act of love for you to soon forget, and write off as some sort of weird anomaly or coincidence.  There is going to be even greater miracles, that will be even harder to dispute, and you are going to marvel at them more than you marvel at this.  In effect, your inability to explain away the miracle associated with this act of love is about to get compounded in scope and frequency.  This was unwelcome news, as it implies a supernatural power is behind the acts of Christ, and they may be arguing against something larger than humanity on this one.  This is not going to be just another typical verbal debate; this one comes with proof of the divine position on the question of law.

Now recognizing that they are debating something greater than humanity, if one is determined to hold to ones position on the law, then the natural conclusion is that Jesus must be acting on behalf of some evil power, not from God.  But before they can hold on to this conclusion (in spite of all the facts to the contrary), Jesus trumps this idea by offering them a power the devil does not have, in verse 20 He continues … “For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.”  Lest you think Satan is behind the miracles I do, the ability to raise the dead is something only God could do, and so only the Son can do it as well.  Again following the understanding of Jewish culture of the day, Jesus is saying I have learned what my Father taught me.  And this time He is clearly articulating that only God could do the act of bringing back the dead.

How poignant a lesson for us; here is Jesus saying to us … only God can bring back the dead.  Do you realize that in embracing the pain of sin, you have embraced the death that sin brings?  Only God can bring back the dead, only God can restore the life He intended for you, from the death you have embraced.  And what is more, only Jesus can save you from this death you have chosen.  Without the redemptive, restorative, creative power of God, you would be doomed to your slavery to self, to pain, and to the death you would one day crave as the only escape from such a tortured existence.  God alone can bring you back from this death.  God alone can, not only restore your body, but He can restore your life to one of freedom to love others, not bound to only think of self.  This truth has never been more relevant, and more needed than in our hearts and lives and motives.

In verse 22 and 23 Jesus now outlines the true mission of the Messiah … “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: [verse 23] That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.”  The work of judgment has been reserved to Christ.  Christ had been sent into the world by His Father to redeem, to restore, to bring life.  Jesus is saying in verse 20, God alone can bring back the dead, and in these verses, I am here to do just that from a spiritual perspective.  The work of the Messiah is not the work of a man.  It is the work of God the Father, in sending His only Son to this world.  Honoring the Father CANNOT happen if honor is not also given to the Son He sent.  There is no bypassing Jesus or the Messiah in the act of judgment.  The judge interprets the law.  The judge has the final say.  The judge overrules the opinions of the lawyers, and makes the final determination.  If this is a question of law, then you are talking to the lawgiver, and the judge.  Judgment on whether acts of love are work on the Sabbath is something Jesus will decide, as God has given Him this role.  The Messiah is more than man, He is God, the Son of God.

What is more, salvation CANNOT occur bypassing Jesus and attempting to appeal directly to the Father.  This is a team effort.  And if we refuse to acknowledge the way of our salvation, we are refusing the gift of the Father as well as the gift of His Son.  God is saying to the world, this is “how” you will be saved, through my Son.  Through the ultimate definition of the law in action, look at the life of Christ, look at how far love will go to save and redeem, this is my method for your redemption.  Jesus is the living embodiment of the law, and when questions of interpretation arise, look to Christ.  Christ is the judge of what the law means, and how it is to be interpreted.  His life is that definition.  The words God gave on the top of Mount Sinai, now have a living example to model after.  The meaning of the law now has a living witness, and a living judge.  Whatever you thought you knew about the law, measure those interpretations against the life of Christ; for Christ is the standard by which we can measure the love that inspires the law.

Verse 24 summarizes the entirety of the gospel … “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”  Jesus plainly states this is how you avoid condemnation and pass from death unto life, is belief that God sent Christ to save you.  Notice, Jesus does not say you are saved by your strict adherence to the law.  He does not say you are saved by the doctrines you believe and by your interpretations of scripture, and understanding of prophecy, and the time you spend in reading and prayer.  You are saved not by the accumulation of your spiritual efforts, but by your belief in something outside of yourself.  You are saved by your belief that Christ can and will save you from yourself.  Christ is not throwing away the Sabbath, or the law, He is instead offering you a way to see clearly what it means, and how to truly “keep” it.  Christ is not throwing away His book, or His word, He is instead telling you that your wisdom in these matters requires further instruction.  You are to be the student, not the teacher.  You are to learn from Christ, not teach Him what your truth is.  Your salvation comes to you as a gift of God, something outside of yourself.  All of your accumulated truth is meaningless outside of submission to Jesus Christ.  All of your attempts to obey are fruitless outside of Jesus Christ.  You are saved first, then you can finally begin to learn what obedience means, and why motives matter.

In verse 25 Jesus continues … “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.”  In this Jesus is speaking both literally and spiritually.  Those who accept Jesus are transformed from death unto life.  And Jesus has the power to reach into the grave and cause the dead to hear Him and respond.  Lazarus would soon be a literal example of power of restorative creative love.  But thousands more who heard the sermons of Christ would become living examples of this transformation.  The 12 who were with Him now, would become men to reap the harvest and help change the world.  Millions would pass from death unto life by hearing and believing the words of Christ, if only through the written account of John in his gospel.

Jesus continues in verse 26 and 27 … “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; [verse 27] And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.”  Here is Jesus plainly stating God is author of all life.  Life is within God.  Life is also within Christ.  Not life that was placed there, but life that was authored there.  God is the source of life.  Christ is the source of life.  Our restoration is possible because Christ restores life to us.  And the life Christ brings to us is everlasting as He is everlasting.  We will be made to live forever because Christ lives forever.  We are not immortal now.  There is no inherent immortality in us.  Life was placed into us, it did not originate in us.  It originates in God, and as such only God can give it as a gift.  Here is Jesus saying judgment is reserved to Him because He is both God, and by choice, man.  God has become man in order to save that which was lost. 

The act of redemption requires no rest on the Sabbath.  This is the living example of the life of Christ, who is the judge on this matter.  The Sabbath has not been broken, it has been affirmed.  This is the ruling of the Judge, both in heaven and in earth.  The Sabbath is all about companionship with God, time with God, time reserved that is special for man and God.  Nothing Christ has done in his act of love to the man who was diseased for 38 years, was considered “work”, it was considered restoration based in love.  Despite the man’s response which was known before it was committed, despite the act of betrayal of Christ to those bent on killing Him, it did not deter the love of the Father or the Son for this sick man.  No matter how we respond to the love of God, it does not deter God from loving us.  Though we hate Him, He still loves us.  Though we betray Him unto death, He still loves us, and seeks our redemption.  This is the power of love.

Now Jesus looks forward to the end of the work of the Messiah, in verses 28 and 29 He continues … “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, [verse 29] And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”  Even at the end of the earth, even at the end of all things, it is still the voice of Christ who ALL the dead can hear.  It is still the voice of Christ that can call that which is dead and lost back from the graves they have ALL gone down into.  Notice this does not imply that disembodied souls are floating around somewhere, powered by themselves, that are now compelled to return to their reanimated bodies.  This states the dead who were ALL resting in their graves are restored by the power of Christ at the end of all things, whether righteous, or wicked, dead is dead.  And only Christ can restore what is dead.

The condition and eternal destiny of the dead is not determined by their actions, but it is revealed by them.  Motives inspire action.  Those who have done good, are those who through submission have been freed of themselves, and have learned to love as God loves.  God within them, inspires them to do good.  God in control of their will, their desires, and their actions leads them to do good, from a desire to do good.  Those who refused the gift of God, who instead trusted to their own ideas, their own will power, their own actions, do what is predictable, that which is in their own best interests.  Inevitably this leads to doing evil.  The reasons behind the actions matter.  Doing what is perceived as a “good” action, for a selfish reason, can hardly be classified as truly “good”.  The recipient of this action may benefit, but the one who does it, does not benefit.  Good must come from a restoration within us.  This is not natural to us, and can only happen when it is God who restores us from death unto life, as we submit our entire lives into His control.  This is what determines our destiny, and is revealed by the transformation that takes place within us while we yet live.  What we do, is then a result of our salvation from ourselves, or a revelation that we have refused to let this occur.

In verse 30, Jesus tries again to illustrate that the will of God to save us, is not something just He does, but something His Father is also keenly interested in … “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.”  Father and Son equally engaged in the effort to redeem mankind.  Nothing Jesus is to do in this world is a one-sided affair; it is the will of His Father.  The miracles that Jesus is to perform are not from the power of His humanity, but from the will of His Father.  Though divine, Christ submits His own life to the will of His Father, as we must also do, if we are to be saved.  Even though He was perfect Christ still submitted His own will to God the Father.  He did not trust to Himself, but to His Father.  Even in this Christ shows us the example of how to live and find salvation from ourselves.

In verses 31 through 38 Christ then moves the conversation to the witnesses that He is speaking the truth.  He first says that it is John the Baptist who for a while they were happy to believe that testified of Christ.  It was only then, that this group of religious leaders lost interest in the message of John.  Interestingly enough while John’s message was to repent, a rather fundamentalist concept, the religious leaders were OK with him.  When he then testified of Jesus, they lost interest.  How reminiscent of modern Christianity, very interested in discussing sin and publicly condemning behavior with which we do not agree.  But when it comes to surrendering to Christ, the message goes eerily quiet.  Christ continues then, His argument that it is the Father in heaven that testifies to the truth of His words, through the divine miracles He performs.  This is the truth they did not want to hear, and the one for which there was no other answer, than that they were wrong.  And so they chose to disregard it anyway.

In verse 38 Jesus offers a stinging criticism.  The study of the law is not the same as the embracing of the law.  The study of scripture is not the same as the embracing of scripture.  Had the leadership embraced the law they would have by extent embraced the love that stood behind the law.  Had they placed their focus on motive over actions, they would have recognized the healing of the man to be an occasion of great joy, great love, and great rejoicing.  Love had renewed a life.  Those who had the word of God within them, would know this.  But as Jesus said to them … “ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.”  In the rejection of Christ, was bound the rejection of the testimonies that pointed to Christ, and the Father who sent Him.  You cannot have the word of God abiding within you, and then reject the words and message and life that is represented in Christ.  It is not the law that saves; it is the love behind the law.  It is only the Lawgiver who saves.

In verses 39 and 40 Christ undoes the foundation of their religious thinking.  He likewise undoes the basis for every Christian denomination on planet earth.  Jesus says … “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. [verse 40] And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”  The Jews had gotten so hung up on studying the scripture that they thought that act alone would offer them eternal life.  Christianity likewise today, gets so hung up on the differences in doctrine from the examination of scripture we hold to, that we believe these distinctions alone are what save us, or doom us for eternity.  We are both wrong.  We are all wrong.  The scriptures testify of Jesus Christ as our one salvation.  We ALL need to surrender to the one Lord alone.  Jew, Christian alike, are wrong that it is the study of scripture that saves.  It is only in coming to Christ that we are saved.  We may have memorized the entire Bible word for word, but if we have not embraced the point of the testimony, if we have yet to come to Christ, we are as lost as we ever were before we opened the book.  Salvation comes from Christ, not from study, not from the perceived distinctions that separate modern Christians.  Salvation comes from Christ.  Only in Christ can truth or unity ever be discovered.  Only will love ever heal the pain and differences we have allowed to take precedence over the love that emanates from the heart of God.

The words of verse 40 still haunt my ears … “But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.”  He was speaking to the those who thought they had the truth.  He was speaking to a nation who had dedicated itself to the keeping of the law, to the preservation of the prophets, to a worship system that Christ had setup all those years ago in the desert.  And despite all this blessing, and all this truth, and all this scripture, they STILL did not have the love of God within them.  Could it be those same haunting words are equally applied to me in the church pew in which I find myself?  Could it be that modern Christianity despite having yet another Testament of Christ, the gospels of John and His contemporaries, that we would STILL not have the love of God within us?  This prospect is terrifying and predictable.  If we have refused to surrender, even with all the accumulated knowledge of our age; if we still prefer to trust our own wisdom instead of surrendering it to Christ, we stand with the mob that day bent on taking the life of God.  There is no difference between us.

In verse 43 and 44 Jesus goes on to point out the absurdity of ignoring the divine stamp of approval on the life of Christ and miracles He performs, with a preference to have one man testify of another.  Christ tells this group that they argue against the Ruler of the Universe, instead preferring human wisdom, human honor, human approval.  This is not a question of law that has been raised.  This has become a question of ego.  These folks do not want to submit to the idea that they could be wrong about what they believe.  It is not the law that is wrong, it is the interpretation they have devised that is in error.  It is not the words Moses penned on paper that were in error.  It is the focus on humanity and human judgment and the refusal to submit to God, that has resulted in the errors associated with the keeping of the law.  It has resulted in blinding them to the joy of a healing, and instead a focus on the fact that it was done on the Sabbath.  This is the crazy, that develops when human wisdom is preferred to the divine.

Christ concludes His dissertation by referring them back to the author they most revere.  In verse 45 He says … “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. [verse 46] For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. [verse 47] But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?”  Here Jesus plainly says, all of scripture, including the writings of Moses testify of Christ.  If they have missed this, they have missed the point entirely.  If Moses testifies of Jesus, and though they say the follow Moses, they still deny Jesus, they are not likely to accept the words of Christ as proof.  But in this their problem is compounded.  If Moses truly condemns them for their lack of belief, is there any hope left to them?  They have made a career, and a life, out of the study of the law.  Now Jesus tells them, they have missed the point entirely, and the patriarch they so revere is condemning them for their choice to trust in their own wisdom.

Many years ago when Moses died before entering the Promised Land he was buried in secret by God.  But apparently the devil found his body, and contended for it.  So God called Moses out of the grave and had taken him into heaven.  Perhaps the devil was looking for his body, to attempt to use it to cause the people to believe a lie.  Who knows?  But the Jews did believe that Moses had been taken to heaven.  So the idea that Moses might be in heaven actually accusing them to God the Father, was literally un-nerving.  At this idea, their animosity and intent to kill Christ was quelled for the moment.  This idea took them back, caused them to pause and re-group.  At this point, Jesus had told them He was the Messiah, the Son of God, the judge and final arbiter of what it means to obey the law, and now that Moses testified of His divinity.  A question of law had evolved into the larger question of salvation in general.  For now, whether the man carried his bed or not did not matter.  For now, whether Jesus had blasphemed did not matter.  For now what mattered was to consider the words of Christ and just make sure Moses was not on His team.

And so Christ was able to withdraw from this confrontation, and travel away from Jerusalem once again.  This had been the first time in His ministry, when Jesus so clearly had told the people and leaders who He was, and what the mission of the Messiah was.  Though judge, He was not here to judge, but to redeem.  Though God, He would daily submit His own will to the will of the Father.  His teachings focused on motives, and demonstrated love in action, not just in theory, or in words.  He was there to restore life.  He was here to bring the dead back to life, those who had died spiritually were to be awakened through the power of His words.  Nothing, not even death, could separate us from the love of God, both Father and Son. 

I do not know if the man who had been healed heard this discourse.  I do not know if he ever later read the encounter John would record.  I can only imagine that if he did, he would have been covered in the shame of his betrayal of God to a mob bent on killing Him.  I can only imagine he would have been SO sorry that he clung to his traditional ideas about the law, instead of embracing the love Christ was offering to him.  But in the same way, as I examine my own life, I see all the times I clung to my own ideas about scripture and the law, trusting to my own wisdom instead of submitting it to the only God who would save me.  I see all the times when I thought to conquer sin on my own, instead of abandoning this work to Christ who alone is capable of doing it for me.  And I too share the shame of the healed man.  I hope we both learned from our mistakes, and going forward, were neither of us ashamed to surrender fully to Jesus Christ each day forever more.  For in this is salvation, even for one who betrayed Him, like the healed man, and like me.